The FRIED Podcast
Introduction
Introduction
Listen to a short introduction to the FRIED Podcast on Media Hopper:
The FRIED Podcast: An Introduction
We are keen to hear your thoughts and suggestions! Do not hesitate to email us:
The podcast is realised with editorial assistance from Rachel Carlile (Episodes 1-4) and Llibi Mendez de Vigo (following episodes).
FRIED podcast series 1 - On transforming food: voices from the (battle)fields
Our first podcast series, which started in the summer of 2021 and is ongoing, features combative voices from those working in the various parts of the food sector - mainstream, emergency and charity, and alternative.
Especially in the current conjuncture, such voices are very welcome to get us to reflect not only on food capitalism and its discontents, but also on possible fronts of actual change.
- Episode 1: Food capitalism and workers inquiries, with the Angry Workers collective (May 2021)
Food capitalism and workers inquiries, with the Angry Workers collective
In this episode, Isabelle is talking with Kiran and Marco, two members of the “Angry Workers” collective, a group of people seeking to do left politics in new ways, starting from the everyday working lives of working people.
Last year, Kiran and Marco and the Angry Workers published a book, Class Power on zero hours. This book narrates their lives in the food sector, where they each chose to work for three and a half years.
Kiran worked at Bakkavor, a multinational food processing company in the ready-made, fresh sector, and Marco worked at a Tesco warehouse, a so-called ‘Customer Fulfilment Centre’.
Through this work, as well as other local activities in that part of West London called the western corridor, they got to know many workers and developed a sense of the logic of the sector.
Drawing on this incredibly rich picture, as well as on their research and their intellectual and political formation, their book is essential for anyone seeking to understand food capitalism today.
Listen to our discussion in this first episode of the FRIED podcast!
Listen to episode 1
- Episode 2: A School Food Journey - Learnings from the Covid 19 Crisis, with Jayne Jones (August 2021)
A School Food Journey - Learnings from the Covid 19 Crisis, with Jayne Jones
In this episode, Mary is talking with Jayne Jones, Commercial Manager for Argyll and Bute Council and National Chair of ASSIST FM Food and Drink Public Sector Catering. She has been the driving force behind innovations in school food quality, procurement and service delivery for Argyll and Bute. In her role as National Chair for ASSIST FM, she is the voice of Scottish Local Authorities on all matters related to public food. She has most recently been on the COVID 19 frontline leading the School Food response locally and nationally showing how public food service has really stepped forward in response to unprecedented food insecurity.
Listen to episode 2
- Episode 3: Community growing, with Evie Murray (October 2021)
In this episode, Mary is talking with Evie Murray, CEO of Earth in Common (formally Leith Crops in Pots). Born and bred in Leith, Edinburgh, Evie leads a grassroots community organisation that has transformed a barren concrete yard in the heart of Leith into a thriving and vibrant community growing space known as Leith Community Croft. We hear about this journey, her experiences through the COVID 19 pandemic and their future vision for, and work to support the development of more, city based community crofts.
Listen to episode 3
- Episode 4: Food Sovereignty and the Peasant Declaration in Haiti - contesting the UN Food Summit, with Origène Louis (December 2021)
This new episode of the FRIED podcast brings the question of food fights and struggles on the terrain of food sovereignty in Haiti, with an interview with Origène Louis, National executive coordinator of the Haitian Small Farmers Cooperative Association. The Haitian Small Farmers Cooperative Association seeks to address the situation of agriculture in Haiti and the peasant way of life, by increasing agroecological farming and enhancing food sovereignty. In this podcast, Marisa Wilson (FRIED) and her colleague Patricia Northover (University of the West Indies) find out about the views of the association on the UN Food System, Summit COP 26 and the fights led by peasants through such peasant organizations to claim their rights. We also hear about the October 16th, 2021 Haitian Peasant declaration that stems from the Haitian Small Farmers Cooperative Association. With thanks to Dr Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo, who acted as translator for this conversation (thanks also to the Global Partnership network for funding for the translation and to Dr Aurelien Kepler from the Karl Lévêque Cultural Institute).
Listen to episode 4 in English.
Listen to episode 4 in French Creole.
Transcript of the episode in English.
- Episode 5: Social (in)Justice in the Modern Food System (coproduced with FSS.) With Isabelle Darmon, University of Edinburgh and Marina Chang, University of Coventry (initially recorded in February 2022, published April 2024)
This episode has been co-produced with the Food Security and Sustainability Society, a student society at the University of Edinburgh. Many thanks to Hannah Clark, as FSS podcast editor and facilitator for this conversation. In this episode, Hannah talked with Isabelle (FRIED member, lecturer in Sociology and Sustainable Development) and Marina (Research Fellow at Coventry University, working on community growing and agroecology in London) about their understandings of food justice and injustice within and beyond the food system. In so doing they necessarily constantly move from specific, place-based examples to global systems and movements and back. This episode was edited by Llibi Mendez de Vigo.
Listen to episode 5.
Content
FRIED Podcast series 2 - Life in Food. A podcast series on biographical accounts of actors of the food scene in Scotland and beyond
This new 'Life in food' series in a way aims to continue in the spirit of the 'voices from the battlefields' of our first series, but focusing on the singular voice and experience of a protagonist, and how that protagonist's own life experience brought them to studying/intervening and... 'battling' in food.
- Episode 1: Mary Brennan. January 2023
We start the series with the 'life in food' of our own Mary Brennan, chair of food marketing and society at the Edinburgh Business School and founding member of FRIED. Mary is interviewed by Imogen Bevan, also a longstanding FRIED member, recently awarded a PhD in social anthropology and currently an ESRC postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Social and Political Science.
Mary takes us from the shores of her childhood, in Kerry, Ireland, the dairy farming of her uncle, and the communal sharing of labour that still took place among dairy farmers in those days of the 70s, to her recent tour of Scottish farming and fishing constituencies as chair of Scottish Food Coalition actively involved in the preparation of the Good Food Nation bill. A fascinating 'life in food' where we learn how Mary's first move into food engineering shaped her systems orientation for life, and how her own 'less than ideal' food habits got her interested in social practice theory (where not everything is about the individual's choices and habits!)...
We hope you enjoy this new episode and series! This podcast was edited by Llibi Mendez de Vigo (FRIED).
Listen to episode 1 here.